


Down to a Sunless Sea

by marmolita



Category: Marco Polo (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Multi, Suicide Attempt, sorry for the crazy relationship and character tags, the tags for Nergui are so confusing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8803633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita/pseuds/marmolita
Summary: The Marco Polo mermaid AU you didn't know you needed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wildehack (Tyleet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/gifts).



> Wildehack, you will know who wrote this as soon as you see the title and tags. Sorry I didn't do something more surprising! I struggled for a long time to decide what to write for you and ended up scrapping the first attempt and writing this instead. I'm sorry it's not as long or complex a fic as you deserve, but I hope you enjoy it anyway!
> 
> I realize that it's a bit problematic to take a show that is so completely entangled with Mongolian culture and Mongolian history and then write a mermaid AU, when Mongolia is a landlocked country with almost no large bodies of water. I did a bit of research on undersea topology and sea life in the South China Sea but ended up fudging everything, so if you can be okay with mermaids I hope you can also be okay with an alternate geography in which there's underwater Mongolia that happens to have a Mariana-like trench.
> 
> Warning for suicide attempt/suicidal ideation. Look, if you made it through season 2 of Marco Polo though, this isn't anything worse than you saw there, and it's in fact really not anywhere near as bad.
> 
> Title is from "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Her body feels strange, emptiness eating her up inside. Her organs can't seem to find the right places to settle now that the babies have been born. Now that _her_ babies have been born, not her husband's.

They deserve better. Two innocent lives, who know nothing of the horror of their conception, of the circumstances that forced her to it -- they deserve better than a mother who can't even look at them. Jingim deserves better than a wife who cannot love him.

And Nergui? Nergui, who brings death on all who love her? The death of her people clings to her like a curse, a curse that looks like the dead princess Kokachin. Empress Chabi says that Kokachin is a hallucination borne of the pregnancy, but now that the babies are out, even though she has not seen or heard from her tormentor, she can _feel_ her presence. She is plagued by memories of her countrymen being slaughtered before her eyes.

She should have died with Kokachin. _That_ is what Kokachin has been trying to tell her, these past months. She should have died, and if she doesn't, she knows that something worse will happen.

The ocean is vast and cold, and she dives deep. The filtered sunlight from the surface dims, then disappears. Still, she swims down. It will take everything she has left to go deep enough for the weight of the sea to crush her fragile body.

***

"Marco!" Jingim calls, whipping around the corner of the reef as the tips of Marco's fins flicker in the waning light. "Where are you going?"

Marco stops, silhouetted against the surface, and turns his head back toward Jingim. His expression is unreadable, and Jingim's nerves draw even tighter than they were. "Back to the Mediterranean. Back to where I belong."

"You _belong_ here, brother," Jingim says urgently, swimming closer. Marco's silver scales shimmer under the blue-green algae as he dips his head.

"I know you mean that, but I have overstayed my welcome. The Khan and his wife would have me gone."

"I'll talk to them! I know this has been a difficult time, but we need you now, more than ever. _I_ need you."

"You don't need me, Jingim. You'll be the ruler of this sea some day, and you're ready for it."

Jingim laughs harshly. "Hardly. Two tiny babies I don't know what to do with and a wife I can't even find. That's why I came out here, actually, have you seen Kokachin? She's not with the children and I can't find her anywhere."

Marco's gills tense in concern. "She was in the nursery when I went to say goodbye to her."

"You said goodbye to my wife but not to me? Just as she asked for _you_ to be in her presence when the babes were born but not me?"

"I-- That's beside the point. She can't have been gone long. I'll-- I'll help you find her, but then I must go."

"We'll see about that. But yes, I would welcome your help."

***

"I checked her usual favorite places, but nobody there has seen her," Jingim reports, meeting back up with Marco near the nursery. He's beginning to get frantic, tail thrashing in worry. "Mother," he calls, swimming over to catch Empress Chabi before she disappears inside, "have you seen Kokachin?"

His mother cups his face with her hands, and Jingim's heart sinks. "She swam out toward the trench."

"What? And you just let her--"

"My son," Chabi says, her eyes serious, "she is not herself. She has not been herself since the pregnancy. Perhaps it would be best to let her go."

Jingim shoves past her and heads out into the open ocean. He barely notices when Marco catches up, quick and small beside him. "We'll find her," Marco says, but he doesn't sound convinced.

***

The depths of the ocean are beginning to suffocate her, but Nergui doesn't mind. A glowing jellyfish floats past, blue lights twinkling in the darkness, like the stars in the sky that she used to love to gaze at when she was a girl. The Bayaut celebrated the festival of the new moon every month, swimming up to the surface to stare at the stars, to wonder if the sky was as high as the sea was deep.

Since her people died, she hasn't looked at the stars even once.

There's a headache starting in her temples, like her skull is being squeezed. She flips her tail and dives deeper.

***

"Jingim, I am here to help, but how do you expect to find her out here? We can hardly see, and there's nobody around to ask for information."

"I don't know what they teach you in the Mediterranean, but we are raised to be trackers. Can you not feel the shifting currents around you? Can you not sense the eddies created by passing fish and turtles? She went this way, I'm sure of it." Jingim isn't actually that certain, but the alternative is unthinkable. If he's right, the currents are telling him that Kokachin has headed down.

"The trench is called the Valley of Souls," Marco says. "Why?"

"There are different legends among different tribes," Jingim replies. "Some say that the trench is the root of life, and that the Ocean's heart lies at the bottom. He created the first merman and mermaid and sent them up out of the trench with pieces of his heart inside them."

"And the other legends?"

"That if you venture too far, the Ocean will take your soul from your body and you will be lost to the darkness."

Marco is quiet, and they swim on, out of the dim twilight and into the darkness.

***

Jingim clicks his tongue loudly, focusing for echoes. There, a lanternfish. There, a jelly. There, a creature he has no name for, but definitely not a mermaid. Beside him, Marco does the same, but Jingim knows that there are no places quite so deep in the Mediterranean.

A squid, an anglerfish, another jelly. A giant siphonophore floats past, lighting up the deep with a blue glow. The pressure is making his head ache, along with the rest of his body. Marco looks pained beside him. Jingim clicks louder.

Rocks, crabs, more lanternfish, and--

"There!" he shouts, shooting down as fast as he can. Marco is right on his tail, and he starts to get lightheaded from the pressure. Just a little further, a little deeper, and there, he catches her hand. "I've got her," he gasps, and Marco is there, pulling him back by the tail, up and up and up.

The pressure lessens, the headache diminishes, light returns to the sea, and Jingim wraps his arms around Kokachin. She's unconscious, but alive -- barely. Marco lets go, breathing hard at the exertion, and swims around to brush his fingers through Kokachin's hair.

"What is it?" Jingim asks at the expression on Marco's face. "Tell me, Marco."

"My Prince," Marco says, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry. I am in love with your wife. That's-- that's why--"

Jingim laughs, clutching Kokachin to his chest with one arm and reaching the other out for Marco to pull him close as well.

"You're not angry?" Marco whispers into Jingim's gills.

"I could be. Or I could be glad to have a brother so loyal he would rather set aside his whole life than risk betraying me. How could I be mad at you for loving her, when I love her so much myself?"

"And if she loves me?"

"Then you will care for her when I must be away from her side, and help me raise our children."

Marco leans his forehead against Jingim's. "I will never betray you. But your wife has her secrets, and I will not betray her either."

Kokachin begins to stir, tail twitching weakly. Jingim trails his fingers across her cheek. "I only want for us to be whole," he says. "For her to be alive? It's enough."

He swims up.

***

Nergui opens her eyes to a field of stars, and a new moon.

**Author's Note:**

> PSA if you actually got down into the Mariana Trench without being in a special deep-sea submersible you would TOTALLY DIE. Maybe merpeople have far more pressure-resistant anatomy. Most of what I know about sea life in the midnight zone I learned from Octonauts.


End file.
